Kerry victims of fraudster Samantha Cookes feature in documentary – ‘I felt sick someone could do this’

Many believed she was being discriminated against because of disabilities she had following a Huntington’s disease diagnosis.

However, it emerged that none of this was true. Carrie Jade was just one of the aliases used by Samantha Cookes and the full extent of her lies emerged in podcasts and media articles about a fraudster from the UK.

Now the full story of Samantha Cookes’ lies is being laid bare in a RTÉ documentary –featuring many of those from Kerry – who were duped into believing the tales told by ‘Carrie Jade’ and who went out of their way to help her.

This included her landlord Tim Hourigan. Like others Tim went out of his way to help Carrie Jade when he found out she had a terminal illness.

“It was the neighbours that told me she had Huntington’s.. Sure you would do anything to help someone with that,” he told The Kerryman, and he did.

However, his kindness was not repaid.

Using her false identity, Ms Cookes claimed that Mr Hourigan had wrongly terminated the tenancy of Carrie Jade Williams in Kenmare in late 2022.

Mr Hourigan was forced to spend resources fighting Cookes’ complaint against him at the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB). He made counterclaims that Cookes had stolen furniture from his property, left a huge mess behind and was €4,500 in rent arrears when she disappeared.

The RTB ultimately dismissed the claim for compensation and Samantha Cookes was convicted of theft from his house.

But he says he never got justice for what happened to him and believes the RTB did nothing to help him. Mr Hourigan took part in the documentary to ensure that her everyone knew what she did.

“It was like something out of a film, like that film ‘Catch me if you Can’. It was a nightmare when I finally got into my house,” he said.

Tim said he found false documentation in the house when he finally entered. This included fake identities, licences, Covid certs and other documentation.

When he found all that she had done he said he ‘felt sick’.

“I feel sick that someone can come into this country and pull the wool over the eyes of charities, organisations and people.”

She also pulled the wool over the eyes of those in St John’s Theatre in Listowel where she told her stories of being ill too. She spent a week there on a residency programme and stayed in touch.

“It was all very simple. She got a residency in January 2023 have applied via email and saying she had won an award for writing for The Financial Times. It was all normal and she told all these ‘fantastical’ tales. We believed the stories. We felt silly and stupid when we found out but nobody got hurt in our scenario,” said Maire Logue.

Chloe McEwan lived next door to Samantha Cookes when she posed as Carrie Jade Williams in Kenmare. Chloe remembers her as being soft, gentle, kind and good natured.

Chloe was invited to Samantha’s fake wedding. But Chloe became suspicious that Carrie Jade’s tall tales were not adding up before being shocked to her core when the story broke that this whole time her neighbour was a convicted fraudster.

The jaw-dropping new two-part documentary shares the astonishing true story of Samantha Cookes – serial scammer, master manipulator, and at one point, a trusted nanny. It is aired on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player this week.

‘Bad Nanny’ tells the story of Samantha Cookes who, for over a decade across Ireland and the UK, used a revolving door of aliases including Carrie Jade Williams and Sadie Harris to weave an intricate web of lies, deceiving everyone from vulnerable families to online communities. Her story was the subject of RTÉ podcast series The Real Carrie Jade.

With gripping first-hand accounts, chilling insight into psychological manipulation, shocking revelations, and raw emotion, the TV documentary series is a must-watch exposé on one woman’s decade-long con and the strength of those who brought her down. It features exclusive interviews with victims of Samantha’s scams who have never spoken publicly and includes unseen archive footage.

Earlier this year in Kerry, Samantha Cookes was sentenced to three years in jail for deception and theft charges for stealing over €60,000 from the State by pretending to have Huntington’s.

Sentencing her at Tralee Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Ronan Munro said that she exploited the ‘natural goodness’ in people by ‘deliberately’ choosing to pretend she has a degenerative neurological disease.

And this too is evident in the new documentary as those that believed her tell their stories.

This two-part film, Bad Nanny, is a co-production between RTÉ and BBC Northern Ireland from Alleycats TV, directed by Alan Bradley. It debuts on Monday, May 12 at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.